Of moving on and forward
The rationale was simple: Against his better judgement, Quirino didn’t want his children to inherit from him the hate for people who might yet be our friends for the permanent interest of the country
War is not ended by military victory. It ends with peace. And, for some, it’s still a long way to go.
Even with Japan’s journey from war to peace and the rich history it shares with the Philippines have become the strong foundation of their friendship, those who have not moved on posit that, while there’s political reconciliation and economic fruition based on the mutual confidence between the two countries, it is not solidly founded on forgiveness.
According to Philippine Ambassador to Japan Jose Laurel V, the process was naturally very difficult, even when Japan was profuse in its apology. It stood in the way of progress even years after Japan signed the Treaty of Peace in San Francisco, vowing to never wage war again. Japan had also early on made amends to their sins by virtue of other treaties that guaranteed reparation, as well as amity, commerce and navigation between the Philippines and Japan.
“In 1966, when my father [Jose S. Laurel III] was requested to become ambassador to Japan by former President Ferdinand Marcos, the Japanese couldn’t even have an office space to rent in the Philippines because the Filipinos didn’t like the Japanese for what they had done,” Laurel told Daily
Tribune. “However, the Japanese have been very contrite. They have been very honest and paid reparation. The friendship was not just in the form of money. It is with sincerity and acts of kindness.”
Today, Japan continues to account for the majority of the Philippines’s foreign trade, and has immensely helped the country in political and cultural matters. This, according to critics, was precisely the reason successive governments have been mum on the issue of human rights abuses that, to this day, could haunt an otherwise good diplomatic relation.
Case in point: The still-controversial plight of the Filipino comfort women who, to this day, repair to protests to demand for a sincere apology and compensation from the “delinquent” state, and whose short-lived memorial that once stood along Baywalk in Pasay City was recently censored on account of the fact that it might needlessly “antagonize” Japan.
The comfort woman issue was not brought to light in the time of negotiation because it was not an issue then.
This, despite similar installations of the wartime icon the world over, Japan’s “apparent” disregard of sensitivity issues on the way it glorifies its war dead in Yazukuni, and the Philippines’ immortalization of otherwise hostile historical figures, such as the Kamikaze (Japanese suicide bombers), in a museum in Pampanga.
“These are incidents of war nobody wants. When we signed the reparations agreement, part of the provisions there said, ‘What are your other complaints? We’re willing to pay,’ Laurel said. “The Filipinos answered, ‘It’s enough.’ The terms were already defined. The comfort woman issue was not brought to light in the time of negotiation because it was not an issue then.”
The comfort woman issue was an afterthought, and had not surfaced until the 1990s, the victims reportedly saying they were afraid to reveal their past in fear of being disowned and ostracized.
Laurel added: “If you want the Japanese to do that, it should be through the backside, through another negotiation, which should not necessarily be called reparation, but something like human rights violations, and that there should be an agreement that the funding should be private. Instead, what happens is it’s becoming political.”
Laurel believes that there’s freedom in forgiveness and amicable settlement. He told a story.
The year was 1953, not even a decade after World War 2, when Elpidio Quirino granted executive clemency to convicted Japanese war criminals and allowed them to return to Japan.
Laurel said Quirino’s own loss was unthinkable. He was the President of the Philippines, he could have used it to avenge because, more important, he was a victim of war. Quirino’s family was among the thousands of Filipinos who stood at the receiving end of unnecessary evils (in the case of Quirino, massacre), among the worst in the Pacific theater, inflicted by the Japanese at the last gasps of the occupation. It wasn’t just stoic; at a time when the Philippines was still reeling toward recovery, and the climate was choked by anti-Japanese sentiments, it was regarded by some as political suicide.
The rationale was simple: Against his better judgement, Quirino didn’t want his children to inherit from him the hate for people who might yet be our friends for the permanent interest of the country. And, thereaf ter, Quirino felt free.